More basketball

Another weekend passes and I have more basketball stories. If you do not care to hear about the girls tournament, now is the time to hit the delete button. Character, desire, competitiveness are words that clearly describes my girls this weekend. We started playing games at 9 in the morning. We finished our 5th game of the day at 9:15 that night. We won our first game and had an hour and a half rest before playing again. Our next game was one for the ages. We were matched up against a very good team from Lubbock. They jumped us pretty good. Got out to a 8-0 lead before we scored. I called a timeout and "challenged" my team to dig deep and find "it" and get back in the game. They walked out and scored 2 quick baskets. The score ended up being 20-9 at half time. This was the first game for the Lubbock team and our second. The girls were already looking tired. The second half started and the girls climbed back to a within 6 pretty quick. The girls battled with them best they could. Here is were it gets crazy awesome. We are down 12 points with barely over 2 minutes to go. Kaiygen, one of my guards hits a 3 from the top. (down 9). Somehow we get the ball back. This whole time I am watching the clock, because I still have 1 timeout left. The girls come down, make a few passes and Kaiygen hits another 3. (we are down 6 with 45 seconds left.) I use my last time out. I tell the girls to "D" up like mad crazed dogs. We get the ball back again and this time Mercedez nails a 3. (we are down 3 with like 30 seconds left). The girls are running around as hard as they can, giving it everything and we get the ball back, and you guessed it...Mercedez hits another 3. (game tied). There are 12 seconds left. Lubbock calls a timeout. I tell the girls, get the ball back, get it down low for 2. That is all we need. I do not remember how, but the girls got the ball and with 4.7 seconds left Zoe gets fouled in the act of shooting and she gets 2 free shots. Before I go any further....Zoe is our best free throw shooter. She steps up and misses both shots. I cannot remember the last time she went O for 2. Overtime. We have the lead and wouldn't you know it, with 2 seconds left in overtime they score to tie it again. Double overtime, we lose by 1. It was one of the most exciting games I have been apart of in a long time and probably the most exciting to this point for my girls. I can't remember how long we had before our next game, but it didn't seem long enough. Won our next game by 10 and then had to play a good team from Plainview. We just struggled through the entire game, much like we had the game before, and never led until a minute or so left in the game. Somehow the girls had reached down again for a 3rd time. We won that game by 1 point. We are now basically in the final four. The last game they were so tired. I had one girl who was sick to her stomach, one with a bad finger, another with a bad knee, and another with a hurt and sore toe. Five games in one day is brutal. We started off ok, but quickly showed fatigue. Led the entire game until the end, and lost. We lost 2 games by a combined total of 3 points. That is hard to take. I think I would rather get destroyed than to barely lose. Losing like that is harder, especially when victory was right there. I had all day Sunday to think about what my little team had done. Six months ago this same very team would have responded very differently. They would have given up when they got down and tired. Maturity, desire, confidence are the things that have changed. These girls believe in each other and themselves now. How many times in our lives have we been down and given up as a child or adult for that matter. Then everyone has "that" story where we decided to give God a try and it somehow worked out for us. Sometimes that story comes at a young age, sometimes as an adult. Either way it gave us the confidence in Christ we maybe lacked. Taught us we are tougher than we think. It makes us discover that through Christ we can do anything. For me, being an athlete all my life it started with experiences like this. Maybe wanting to give up in a game, but continuing to play on and then coming up out of it victorious! Learning lessons like this are a great part of growing up, and something we always continually learn at all ages, either by experiencing first hand or watching others. Experience is the best teacher. Maturity, confidence, desire...all things my team, myself and my Dad (who helps me coach), the girls families, and friends all learned and gained this weekend. We may have lost a couple of close games, but we gained so much more. Till next time.